“If you pay attention to and practice using your senses, you can hone them and may reduce or prevent future problems.”
- Beverly Cowart, Ph.D.
We use all five of our senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch – to perceive and experience the world around us.
Yet, as we age, these senses diminish at varying rates and to different degrees among individuals. We all know that feeling of having a bad taste in our mouth, or the way a stuffy nose makes even the most fragrant garlic pizza taste like cardboard.
A new study by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association found that daily use of blaring MP3 players and cellphones can lead to permanent hearing loss.
Also researchers in Mexico City report that people in urban areas can’t smell strong odors like coffee as well as their brethren in the ‘burbs.
The rest of your senses are also in danger of being dulled. So, here’s how to sustain and sharpen your senses so that every bite (and sniff) tells you what you need to know:
Hearing
Music can be a mallet banging on your eardrums, or it can be a tool to fine-tune them. The trick is maintaining a sane volume (you should be able to carry on a normal conversation) and regularly singling out and listening to one instrument.
“It will help you perceive more details in everyday sounds,” says Gail Whitelaw, Ph.D., president of the American Academy of Audiology. Think of it as a form of resistance exercise, in which you’re training a weak body part.
One glass of red wine may not get you drunk, but it does go to your head. Or, more specifically, to your ears. Researchers with the Henry Ford Health System found that when rats were given resveratrol, the wonder chemical in red wine, they had a 50 percent reduction in noise-induced hearing damage. “We’re confident this is just as effective in humans,” says Michael Seidman, M.D., the lead author.
Smell
Like your tolerance for Johnny Knoxville films, “your sense of smell deteriorates with age,” says Alan Hirsch, M.D., neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago. “By the time you’re 65, your ability will be reduced by half.”
You can dodge this decline by taking a deep whiff of a specific, pleasurable smell every day, whether it’s your partner’s perfume or a pepperoni pizza. “When you do this consistently over a few months, it will cause your body to create new scent receptors,” says Dr. Hirsch.
Speak and smell. Putting words to a scent can supercharge your nose. “Identifying and describing an odor enhances your ability to smell it,” says Beverly Cowart, Ph.D., director of the Monell-Jefferson Taste and Smell Clinic, in Philadelphia.
When researchers at Wayne State University asked people to smell T-shirts worn by family members, they identified who had worn which shirt just by sniffing it and describing the scent. Practice this trick with the edible – “Honey, your sauce has a sweet, garlicky aroma” – and the offensive – “Dude, your sweat has a rotting onion stench.”
Taste
Unless there’s a hot-dog-shaped trophy at stake, stop scarfing down your food. “Thorough chewing unlocks more flavor molecules,” says Dr. Hirsch. “And holding the food in your mouth ensures that those molecules will make contact with both the tastebuds and nasal cavity.” This doesn’t mean stowing your food like chewing tobacco – just wait a few seconds before letting it slide down your gullet.
Your tongue has been burnt, bitten, and tied, but the worst abuse may be the flavor flogging. Give all 10,000 of your tastebuds a break by abstaining from salty, sweet, sour, or bitter foods – whichever taste you can’t get enough of – for 2 weeks.
“When you don’t eat a flavor for a while, your receptors for that flavor are rejuvenated,” says Dr. Hirsch.
Sight
Long stretches of working at a computer, driving a car, or ogling the models on Deal or No Deal can exacerbate eye dryness, the number-one cause of blurry vision. Fortunately, your body comes with a high-tech rehydration system.
“Take ‘blinking breaks’ throughout the day – blinks work like windshield wipers, clearing up the surface of the eye and encouraging tear production,” says Ernest Kornmehl, M.D., a professor of ophthalmology at Harvard medical school. Train yourself to blink every time you perform a frequent action, such as clicking your mouse or flicking your turn signal.
If your eyes could talk… you’d be a circus freak. And in between shows, they’d tell you to fortify them with B vitamins. New USDA research found that people with high intakes of the B vitamins riboflavin and thiamin had the least clouding of their eyes’ lenses, the most direct measure of cataract risk. Increase your intake with a daily multivitamin containing your quota of B1 (thiamin) and B2 (riboflavin). And if you miss a day, grab some trail mix that contains nuts, seeds, and M&Ms to replenish both vitamins.
Touch
If you usually barehand it when batting, putting, or serving, go gloved for your practice swings. “Placing material between your skin and what you’re gripping will force the receptors to work harder as they try to feel through the barrier,” says Tiffany Field, Ph.D., founder of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami school of medicine.
Take the gloves off for the game and you’ll get a boost in sensitivity that will give you greater control.
In the wrong hands, skin can be a blunt instrument. “Without regular stimulation, your skin receptors become less sensitive,” says Dr. Field. Sex is one source of stimulation, especially if body oil enters the equation.
But you can also get a hot-stone massage, go for a swim in bracingly cold water, or use a long-handled bristle brush instead of a wimpy washcloth. Then have more sex.
Our sense naturally declines as we age. Fortunately, taking action will lower your risk – and perhaps even put you ahead.
So, start exercising your senses.
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Bart
November 16, 2006
[...] How to sharpen your senses [...]
November 16, 2006
In regards to the argument about resveratrol, the mice were given incredibly high doses of reservatrol (something on the order of the equivalent of 100 glasses of red wine’s amount). That is hardly feasible for a human in such a short period of time. In the amounts that a person can drink, the resveratrol will do nothing to your hearing, — rather it will be beneficial to your body.
I think it’s best put by Paracelsus [paraphrased]: Only the dose distinguishes medicine from poison.
November 16, 2006
[...] Read More Original Article [...]
November 16, 2006
Nice tips, and some work too, some I’ll have to test
November 16, 2006
Nice. I especially like the part about listening to music at sane volumes actually improving hearing.
November 16, 2006
Simple Tips to Sharpen All of Your Senses…
From time to time, I love sharing brain teasers and simple solutions that can help keep your mind sharp…….
November 16, 2006
Another way to re-sensitize your tongue is to cut meat from your diet. Meat is such a strong flavor, especially beef and pork, that it seemed to dull my senses. Once I switched back to a non-meat diet, I could taste food again. Even subtle flavors that I couldn’t taste before switching are apparent.
November 16, 2006
2 Week break from all of those foods? Would be tough, but I guess it could be done. Nice list, like the touch section.
November 16, 2006
[...] Down below the mess of ads, the Ririan Project outlines how each of the senses can be sharpened or dulled. [...]
November 16, 2006
[...] Url.Site.Psy.how to sharpen your senses [...]
November 16, 2006
[...] We use all five of our senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch – to perceive and experience the world around us. Yet, as we age, these senses diminish at varying rates and to different degrees among individuals.read more | digg story [...]
November 16, 2006
Thanks for a lot of useful information! This would surely help students like me
November 16, 2006
Very interesting post. I think the best way to improve your hearing is to regularly enjoy a bit of complete silence.
November 17, 2006
Thank you for your comments guys, and good luck with your exercises
November 17, 2006
Resveratrol is in stronger dosage in grape juice. Why bother trying to strengthen your senses by getting drunk? Alcohol will ruin your senses. Just drink some Welchs!
November 19, 2006
Mankind is one extended family. We are all related, and therefore we share many characteristic, among them a great spiritual power hidden within our being. But our five senses carry us away from ourselves and ensure that we are constantly engaged in our surrounding. As long we are the slaves of our senses desires, and as long as we follow their dictates we cannot control of that spiritual power within us.
November 19, 2006
[...] Read the full article from the following link. Link & Image: Ririan Project Tags: Senses | Sight | Hearing | Smell | Taste | Touch [...]
November 27, 2006
[...] Pues nada, con el tiempo los sentidos se van perdiendo. Con esto igual se puede retrasar. Intentadlo por si acaso. Original aquí (en inglés). [...]
December 1, 2006
Carnival of Natural Health – November 27, 2006…
Welcome to the November 27, 2006 edition of the Carnival of Natural Health. Even though this is the first edition of the carnival, we got a huge number of submissions. I hope you’ll visit all of them and see what…
December 2, 2006
>
…False. Enhanced sensory perception (and therefore enhanced functional efficacy) has nothing to do with psychopathological attachment to “worldly” concerns. In fact, poor sensory perception is usually associated with maladaptive sensory oversaturation (listening to music nonstop without periods of silence, always wanting to taste something extremely sweet, etc.).
December 2, 2006
Boy, that stuff is really interesting. I’m printing it out to read again later.
I like the bit about using gloves for practice and bare hands for real. Can’t wait to figure out what I’m going to us that one for.
I do have dogs. Maybe petting them with gloves for a while and then switching to bare hands may be neat. Sounds like fun exercises.
December 20, 2006
[...] ATM-S Judd ******************************************* We use all five of our senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch – to perceive and experience the world around us. Yet, as we age, these senses diminish at varying rates and to different degrees among individuals.read more | digg story [...]
January 29, 2007
[...] We use all five of our senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch – to perceive and experience the world around us. Yet, as we age, these senses diminish at varying rates and to different degrees among individuals.read more | digg story Links [...]
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